Friday, 30 March 2012

Ah Food Network, how I love you. We were watching Outrageous Food when we got the inspiration for this. I thought it was going to be really difficult to make, but it wasn't. If we hadn't been documenting the recipe for this post I guess the entire prep would have taken less than 20 minutes.

Mix the Mrs Crimbles stuffing mix with the boiling water and stir well so there's no dry bits left, leave to cool

Gluten Free Stuffing Mix

This Stuff Is Yum, Even By Itself!

Put a sheet of cling film onto a chopping board

Lay 5 slices of the streaky bacon in vertical lines next to each other

About to Make A Masterpiece!

Fold rashers 1, 3 and 5 in half, top to bottom

Lay a rasher of bacon horizontally across, just above folded pieces

Put rashers 1, 3 and 5 back flat

Now fold down rashers 2 and 4

Place another rasher horizontally across, just above the folded pieces

Making Sense?

Put rashers 2 and 4 back flat

Fold down 1, 3 and 5 again, lay a rasher horizontally above the fold

Lay them flat again

Do the same for the bottom half, this time folding upwards, always 1, 3 and 5 then 2 and 4

You will end up with a lovely looking bacon lattice!

Cool Huh?!

Mix the pork mince and salt into the Mrs Crimbles stuffing mix and stir until evenly mixed

Will Make A Great Gluten Free Christmas Stuffing

Cover the bacon with the barbecue sauce

We're Building!

Cut the manchego into slices and crumble on top leaving room at the edges

Bacon, Barbecue Sauce and Cheese, Mmmmmm

Spoon the pork stuffing mixture on top and flatten, leaving gaps at the sides

I'm Thinking Elvis For Some Reason...

Carefully take hold of the top of the cling film and lift up

Pull the cling film towards you

You want a slight overlap but not much

Once the edges have met, make sure that the join in at the very bottom

Tuck the sides under

You should now have an uncooked bacon bomb!

Looking Good!

Sprinkle the sugar over it and pat into the bacon with your hands

Carefully put the bacon bomb into a baking dish and cook for 35 minutes

It's The Free From G Bacon Bomb!

We ended up with 8 generous slices.

Utter Comfort Food

1 Slice Was Not Enough!

I can't express just how good this tasted, you got every single flavour coming through all at once. I chose to use manchego for a bit of a Tex Mex feel, it went perfectly with the barbecue sauce (which is homemade btw), it also takes quite a while to melt, so it didn't ooze out very much at all.

Every flavour complimented each other, it has a salty sweetness that is just an amazing combination. The sugar gives an incredible finish to the taste, I can understand now why people like bacon candy.

Other than the pork and bacon I have no idea what went into the Outrageous Food version all I know is that it was HUGE. This fed me and my OH and there wasn't a piece left, though we really did experience the bacon bomb, we felt like we were going to explode afterwards. I guess this could stretch to three people, but you can easily increase the quantities to serve more.

I see this as total gluten free comfort food and I love the way that it looks and tastes. I'm actually going to do another version, I want to further experiment with some favourite ingredients of mine. It'll be totally different to this one taste wise, but the look will stay pretty much the same. I'm quite excited to make another version.

Couple of things:

Don't take your bacon out of the fridge until you are about to make the lattice. I did and it made it a lot harder to handle the rashers due to the fat getting really oily.

Don't use thick streaky bacon. I've seen photos where people have tried to copy the Outrageous Food version with it and it just doesn't look as good. The lattice is far more detailed when you use thin rashers.

Thin Streaky Bacon

Do take your manchego out of the fridge before you need it as it will be easier to crumble.

What A Marriage!

In order to make sure that I had the pork stuffing seasoned properly I took a spoonful and fried it up into a little burger. With a bit of tweaking this would make a good burger mix, It had a lovely crisp crust with a juicy moist center, I just need to work on seasonings. I'm getting totally confused about who currently stocks what in gluten free land what with all the changes, so if you want to try this gorgeous stuffing mix they have it here
for sure. That's just UK though.

Stuffing Burger

So there you have it, the very first Free From G Bacon Bomb! Sometime next week I'll do the experiment with the other version and it will be posted (providing it works!). Monday will probably see a take on the little burger above, I think I could do a lot with it.